Confidence in Justice: Evidence from Brazil

Abstract

One issue that affects the economic and social development of a country is the ability of the judiciary to present itself as a legitimate instance in resolving conflicts that arise in the social, business and economic development. One way to measure this is through legitimacy of the motivations that lead citizens to trust or not in the Judiciary. We created the Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index (BCJI) as a validation argument for our confidence measure. The BCJI is a measure of perception, which shows the opinion of the population about Brazil’s judiciary. Our results indicate that race and gender are important predictors once controlled for other characteristics of the respondents. Blacks have a slightly lower level of confidence in justice than do whites. Women have less confidence than men. Given that blacks and women have lower levels of confidence in justice, efforts should be made to improve the costs; access and honesty of the justice system toward this group of individuals. Thus, it would be good if there were efforts made to improve access to justice for these classes. Our findings also have other important implications for confidence in justice. We show that people with low income have lower levels of confidence in justice.

Keywords: Confidence in Justice, Institutions, Judiciary

JEL Classification: K11, K30, K40